1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display and a driving method thereof.
2. Related Art
A liquid crystal display (hereinafter referred to as an LCD) is one of the most widely used types of flat panel displays. Generally, the LCD includes two display panels provided with electric field generating electrodes, such as pixel electrodes and a common electrode, and a liquid crystal layer interposed between the two display panels. In the LCD, voltages are applied to the electric field generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the liquid crystal layer. Due to the generated electric field, liquid crystal molecules of the liquid crystal layer are aligned and polarization of incident light is controlled, thereby displaying images. The LCD also includes switching elements connected to the respective pixel electrodes, and a plurality of signal lines, such as gate lines and data lines, for controlling the switching elements and applying voltages to the pixel electrodes.
Among these LCDs, a vertical alignment mode LCD, which arranges major axes of liquid crystal molecules vertically to the display panel in a state when an electric field is not applied, has been widely used due to a high contrast ratio and a wide reference viewing angle. For instance, the reference viewing angle comprises a viewing angle of 1:10 in contrast ratio, or a critical angle of gray-to-gray luminance reversion.
To approximate side visibility to front visibility in the vertical alignment mode LCD, a method of causing a difference in transmittance by dividing one pixel into two subpixels and applying different voltages to the two subpixels has been suggested. However, this method does not resolve side visibility problems.
It should be appreciated that the above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention, and therefore, it may include information that does not necessarily form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.